(Press-Register/John David Mercer)Adam Stagner - hunting Wednesday in north Mobile County with his best friend, Matt Pryor - killed a 780-pound feral hog that apparently is one of the biggest free-ranging hogs ever bagged by a hunter. The massive beast is pictured above in the back of a pickup truck Wednesday night, and its hooves are shown at right. The boar measured 6 feet 11 inches long, had a neck girth of 51 inches, stood an estimated 44 inches tall and had 3.5 inch long cutters (bottom tusks). "It's probably the biggest game animal I'll ever kill," Stagner said.

'It didn't seem like the first 2 shots from that ought-6 even fazed him. I started thinkin' I hadn't brought enough gun.'

TURNERVILLE, Ala. -- At 300 yards, the dark blotch feeding on the Big Oak Hunting Club's No. 7 food plot Wednesday evening evoked different opinions from the three who were looking at it.

For Stagner, 26, the issue wasn't settled until he watched the animal toss its massive head from side to side, sending dirt flying high in its effort to get at the planted crop in the plot in north Mobile County.

It was a wild hog they estimated at between 300 and 400 pounds.

Stagner would later learn that guess was only half right.

They raced back to the house and finally decided a .30-06 would be big enough to handle the job.

The two men returned to No. 7, and about halfway through, Stagner said, things got serious.

"He saw us or winded us about the same time we saw him ... and everything just started happening real fast," Pryor said.

Stagner added, "He started moving off at about 40 yards, and it didn't seem like the first two shots from that ought-6 even fazed him. I started thinkin' I hadn't brought enough gun."

(Press-Register/John David Mercer)Hunters Adam Stagner and Matt Pryor pose with their massive feral hog Thursday, Oct 28, 2009, in the Turnerville community near Chunchula, Ala. The third shot, which Stagner and Pryor agreed likely severed the spine, finally knocked the pig down. A close-range fourth shot ended the hunt.

"I just wanted to make sure it was dead, and then my buddy (Matt) starts jumpin' up and down and yellin,' 'State record! State record!'" Stagner said. "There are hogs all around in that swamp, but nothing like this."

The boar was so big, Stagner's 500-cc four-wheeler couldn't pull it out of the woods, and they had to use a front-end loader to get it into the back of Pryor's four-wheel-drive truck.

Pryor and Stagner took the pig to Dean Brothers Auto Salvage in Kushla, where it was weighed late Thursday morning at 780 pounds.

Alabama doesn't have a record book for wild hogs, which are deemed nuisance animals by the state's conservation department, but an Internet search revealed that Wild Boar USA has maintained the Weiser Weight and Tusk record book since 2005.

A search of the book's free-ranging boar category shows the world record with a score of 737. Official scorer Heather Garner of Aliceville said the score includes the weight plus measurements derived from the animal's tusks.

Unfortunately, Pryor and Stagner cut the tusks out and tried to salvage as much meat as possible before burying the rest.

Even though Stagner's boar scored higher than the existing world record without any tusk measurements, Garner said in order to qualify as a record, it must be possible to get all of the measurements with the hog in a whole condition.

"That's too bad, because if that weight is correct, it sounds like it would have been up there," Garner said.